Saturday, June 9, 2012

حملة درعون "حريصة" على البيئة Daroun Harissa environmental massacre

See this beautiful piece of greenery? Look close... Because soon it might be there no longer!... The municipal council of Daroun Harissa (my own village) has decided to make of this protected area an industrial zone.
The argument is that it will create more "job opportunities" and that it will house all the "printing presses" and other industries of the region.
Considering that there is relatively very low unemployment (due to either being entrepreneurs, or working in Beirut or other coastal towns like Jounieh, or even having several self-started businesses here in the village) and that the president of the municipal council is employing through his company a large number of the village's youth in their major firm in Jisr el Bacha, and that the printing presses already found here are located right beneath the place where people work (as they are family institutions), the argument falls flat on its face (as he made it in Assafir newspaper).
Now think about it this way, if instead of getting your employees who hail from the village to Jisr el Bacha, why not built a nearby factory and get them to be there instead? Wouldn't that save you money?...
Also, and this is from Al Joumhouriya and Addiyar newspapers (respectively published on May 3rd and May 5th 2012) that "this has a political backing from an influential politician" - who also owns a industrial firm (oddly, the motto of this firm in question is very pro-environmental).
In the video below you can see the "Inta Horr" MTV programme relating to this issue and you might as well listen to the president of the municipal council Antoine Chemaly labelling the lawyer behind the petition to stop the environmental disaster Hamid Chemaly (full disclosure: my brother) as "illiterate" among other steamy sentences which make no sense whatsoever especially when Joe Maalouf was cornering him with his questions (he did a good job grilling him).

As you can see, the lack of convincing answers made Antoine Chemaly fume of rage. It turns out that the municipal council has originally filed a request to the National Council of Urban Planing to reconsider their previous decicion (issued on 8/8/2001) which refused to mark this area as being industrial as "the request of the population" of Daroun Harissa, which of course is not true as no one has been consulted on the matter, and the original decision was unilaterally without any consultation with the local inhabitants.

So the bottom line is this, there's a municaplity which is ready to make of an environmental protected area an industrial zone for some quick money and without any regard to the area's needs, its biological equilibrium or long-term implications just for the sake of some politico-financial motivations.